The Heat of the Sun

spinning top. Onlookers
cheered.
    Beyond the bandstand, a half-open doorway beckoned to me. Groping, almost slithering to my knees, I found my way to a bathroom, where I pissed, swaying dangerously, half into a urinal, half on
the floor. The bathroom, startling in its modernity, dazzled with whiteness.
    I leaned against a sink, feeling sick.
    A voice came: ‘I brought you this.’
    Le Vol stood behind me. He held my ashplant.
    ‘Didn’t you leave? You left hours ago,’ I said.
    ‘What, and miss the free champagne?’
    ‘Why did you come tonight?’ My voice was bitter. ‘You didn’t have to come.’
    ‘Shouldn’t I see how the other half lives? Well, now I’ve seen it.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘I wanted to see what you preferred. Or whom.’ Le Vol stepped towards me. Smiling, almost fatherly, he pressed my ashplant into my hand. ‘I meant it about Wyoming,’ he
said. ‘Come with me.’
    ‘Me, out west? I’d better find Aunt Toolie.’
    ‘Or Trouble?’ said Le Vol. Then he was gone.
    ‘Mr Sharpless! Good of you to come.’
    The senator struggled up from a capacious armchair. In one hand he held a burning cigar; the other he stretched towards me, and my own hand, as it sank into his, felt like a sculpture made of
chicken bones and wire. His eyes, huge behind his pince-nez, fixed mine intently.
    ‘Drink!’ he boomed (a command, not a question), winked at a waiter, and indicated to me the chair beside his own.
    Carefully, I descended into slithery ancient leather. Light, weak with winter, fell through mullioned windows, glinting on the axes, maces, and shields that lined the walls. Flames roared in an
immense stony fireplace. I might have been on the stage set of a play, a murder mystery set in a Scottish castle. Faintly, sounds of traffic drifted up from West 44th Street. The doorman, I had
feared, would never let me in. That I, Woodley Sharpless, should be lunching with the man almost certain to be our next president seemed scarcely credible.
    The waiter supplied me with a Scotch and soda, and I noted without surprise that alcohol, Prohibition or no Prohibition, should be served freely in this bastion of the American elite.
    ‘Your health, my boy,’ said the senator, and told me, as his wife had done, how much he liked to meet his son’s friends. ‘You’ve become important to him, Mr
Sharpless. That means you’re important to me.’
    From the first, he assumed a conspiratorial air, determined, no doubt, to get me on his side. He was likely to succeed. Had I considered refusing this invitation? Never. Not for a moment.
    ‘Quite a place, eh?’ He gestured around the lounge. ‘You realize, of course, that I’ve no right to be here?’
    ‘I was thinking that.’ I flushed. ‘About myself, I mean.’
    ‘No, no! You’re a college man! I’m no alumnus. From the age of fourteen I sailed the seven seas. My father-in-law got me my membership. Pulled strings. He was good at
that.’ Luxuriantly, the senator drew back on his cigar – unconcerned, it seemed, by the ash that fell on his paunch.
    ‘Oh, some might object,’ he mused. ‘They objected to a lot about Senator Manville. Pork-barrelling. Logrolling. One rule for the rich. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch
yours. Mud was flung, but none of it stuck. Or not for long. He was a pragmatist, my wife’s father. Everything I know about the art of politics, that man taught me. He hated my guts, of
course.’
    ‘Oh?’ I had read many a Pinkerton profile. His father-in-law, it was said, treated the young B. F. Pinkerton as a son.
    Nervously, I sipped my Scotch. I had come to talk about Trouble and wondered when we would start. Weeks had passed since the party in the penthouse, weeks in which Trouble had holed up at
Wobblewood, never going home to Gramercy Park. He said he never would.
    ‘Hated me, yes,’ the senator continued. ‘Who was I to pay court to a Manville girl? Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t as lowly as they say. Perhaps you’ve heard of
my father’s little empire: the Excelsior, finest hotel in Atlantic City. But I was hardly cut out for the family firm. Restless boy, I was. That’s why I went to sea. But I was looking
for my true calling. Isn’t that the problem a lot of young fellows have? Thrashing about. Trying to find your way. Before you do, it’s hard. I know: it was hard for me.’
    I braced myself. Trouble, I assumed, was just around the corner.
    But not yet. The senator sighed.